RMOUG Training Days 2008 Starting

It’s been a while singe I blogged last time. Not that I’m feeling guilty — it’s coming whenever I have the mood and time left — but I kind of missed it. I have enough to share for few blogs a day and let’s hope I make it more often. But I digress.

I’m in Denver now and it’s RMOUG Training Days time! The University Sessions were running yesterday and the conference itself starts today. I have heard a lot of good things about RMOUG and the conference is considered as one of the best Oracle events in North America. I will be able to confirm it during the next two days but I have no doubt that it’s true.
Daniel Fink was very kind to offer staying at his place so I didn’t book any hotel. Funny that Babette called me last night to find out which hotel I’m staying in — she is coming directly from Sydney and forgot to check which hotel she’s staying in (why am I not surprised?) but she thought it would be same as mine. In the end, it seems she figured that out somehow as I’ve got a big Babette-hug earlier tonight.

My trip was quite good with only a small hiccup – I flew to Denver through Toronto and it was quite cold and snowy there. Maintenance personnel tried to heat it up but failed so after going through deicer we finally took off. On the plane I was busy converting my presentation into iWork Keynotes format – my RAC Load Testing Adventure presentation converted almost flawlessly and I had to do only slight fix ups and I should say that this presentation had some advanced animation stuff. My second presentation (RAC Connection Management) wasn’t that easy to convert which was quite a surprise – the animation was much simpler there. I’m still not done with it but I have time until tomorrow so it should be OK.

When I arrived, Dan was already waiting for me in the airport along with couple other speakers and we drove to the conference center. Thanks for pick up Dan! I’ve met Carol Dacko there as she finished her Oracle University session right at that time. I was very (very very) hungry as I had only had light breakfast about 12 hours ago. I should mention that few days ago we had already a plan to go to Sullivan’s Steak House and the timing was perfect. I’ve had one of the best steaks in my life melting in my mouth – Porterhouse Steak 24 oz. It was a bit pricey but definitely worth it. We also watched NCAA basketball game (Carol is a big fan of college sports, apparently) and, as soon as the game was over, we joined the rest of RMOUG volunteers and speakers crowd in Wynkoop Brewing Co. A few free beers and many friendly faces always cheer you up. My favorite was their Amber Ale.

Denver is in the Mountain time-zone so midnight here is 2AM back in Ottawa. I started this blog yesterday night but felt tired so decided to go to bed. Unfortunately, I didn’t change the time-zone on my Blackberry and so the alarm ran two hours earlier than it should — I was lucky enough to realize that just before I jumped into the shower so I was able to catch another hour of sleep at least.

I’m at the keynote session now – Rich Niemiec is talking about How Oracle Came to Rule the Database World. Quite an entertaining speech. Unfortunately, it seems there is no wireless internet so I need to find the way how to deliver this post to the blog. If you read this post, it means that I found it. Stay tuned — more to come.

About the Author

What does it take to be chief technology officer at a company of technology experts? Experience. Imagination. Passion. Alex Gorbachev has all three. He’s played a key role in taking the company global, having set up Pythian’s Asia Pacific operations. Today, the CTO office is an incubator of new services and technologies – a mini-startup inside Pythian. Most recently, Alex built a Big Data Engineering services team and established a Data Science practice. Highly sought after for his deep expertise and interest in emerging trends, Alex routinely speaks at industry events as a member of the OakTable.

PYTHIAN®, LOVE YOUR DATA®, and ADMINISCOPE® are trademarks and registered trademarks owned by Pythian in North America and certain other countries, and are valuable assets of our company. Other brands, product and company names on this website may be trademarks or registered trademarks of Pythian or of third parties. Use of trademarks without permission is strictly prohibited.